by Jennifer R. Edwards
I won’t be made to reproduce.
I won’t be made.
I won’t let you maid me.
My political-literal body
won’t be man-made-mangled-maimed
with substandard, unsafe
political-actual
policing-prodding.
I refuse laboring bodies producing-consuming-
absorbing this latest
disaster.
Lately your disaster keeps reproducing
blood-bodies.
Your disaster is bloody late but too
early for us to produce protection.
Your disaster shouldn’t be our bloodied bodies,
make our body your bags.
I won’t say our bodies should labor, late &
chipped from your disastrous mine.
Maybe it’s early for me; being late to your disaster.
Our late bodies won’t be unmade,
aren’t your labor,
your disasters to fix or fondle.
I don’t want your mass-produced undoing.
It’s not too late for me; your disaster came early
for my love,
for my daughter.
A growing body of evidence indicates
disasters should be named. My daughter
thinks of her disaster as love; I name him
something secretive because everything has changed.
Our bodies won’t just produce.
Our bodies won’t reproduce because we’re told.
Our bodies won’t take just anything you produce.
Jennifer R. Edwards’ debut collection, Unsymmetrical Body (Finishing Line Press, 2022), recently received a 2023 Eric Hoffer Honorable Mention Poetry and was a First Horizon Finalist. Her Pushcart Prize nominated poetry has won (2022) and been honorably mentioned for the New England Poetry Club Amy Lowell Prize. Her poems appear in anthologies and literary magazines including Mom Egg Review, One Art, Gyroscope Review, Passengers Journal, Terrain, Literary Mama, Snapdragon, Tiny Spoon, and The Racket. She’s an educator and preschool speech-language pathologist in Concord, NH, residing with her family and pug. See her work and get in touch at Linktree, Twitter, Instagram, or PW.org.
Emerge Literary Journal 